The Girl In The House

He’d missed the last bus from work, and Leo needed to get home fast. If he didn’t, his mother wouldn’t get her injection, and that’d leave her in agony.

Against his better judgment, he took a shortcut through the abandoned neighborhood between the factory and his apartment. His mother had always forbidden him to come into the web of oddly angled and curving roads. She’d claimed it was infested with rats and dangerous vagrants.

But he needed to get home fast.

Passing by a dilapidated three-story house, Leo heard something.

“Please, help me, mister,” the high pitched voice of a little girl called out.

Leo knew he should just ignore the voice. There were so many stories about this neighborhood and the strange thing’s that’d happened here in the years before the war.

“Help me, please help me!” the little girl said again.

The front door of the abandoned building hung half off its frame. The dark opening looking like the open mouth of a funhouse demon. Just looking at it filled Leo’s stomach with a watery terror.

Leo knew he shouldn’t respond, but if there was a little girl in there, she probably needed help.

“Is anyone in there?” Leo asked, trying not to yell.

There was no point in pushing things too far and attracting the attention of the denizens of the neighborhood.

“Please help me, mister, my foots caught, and I can’t get out. I’m scared, mister,” the little girl said.

Shit, shit, shit, this is a bad idea! Leo thought even as he cleared the distance to the door.

“Don’t worry, little girl, I’m coming,” he said, trying to remain calm despite the hairs spiking on the back of his neck.

“Please hurry, mister,” the girl said, now clearly sobbing.

Using the light on his phone, Leo entered the house. The smell of mold and rotting vegetation filled his nostrils, and he had to fight the gag in his throat. The last thing he wanted to do was vomit up his dinner.

“Where are you, little girl?” Leo called out, coughing and choking at the smell.

“Around the corner, mister, please hurry.”

Leo jogged to the end of the front hall and turned the corner. There he found the little girl standing in the middle of the hallway with her back to him. He looked down and saw that her feet were in no way trapped.

Leo hesitated, all of his warning bells were screaming at him, something was very wrong.

“Please help me, mister,” the little girl said, not turning to look at him.

“What do you need me to do?” Leo asked, cursing himself for speaking.

Slowly the little girl turned around, and Leo’s stomach dropped to his feet. Where eyes should have rested were instead two empty sockets so black they seemed to absorb the light from the phone. She smiled, showing needle-sharp teeth.

Then in a blur, she cleared the distance between them and stood so close she was almost touching Leo.

“I’m not trapped, mister, I’m hungry,” the girl laughed.

Leo turned to run, but his feet never left the floor. The last thing he felt were those teeth burying themselves in the back of his neck.

There was no one in the neighborhood to hear his screams.

The End